RURALITIC friendship book: Megan Dunn

Remember those friendship books from school where you collected fun facts about your friends? We asked the researchers at RURALITIC to fill in a project “friendship book” to help make our scientists and their research more visible.

This week, we are turning the page to meet Megan Dunn.

Megan, please introduce yourself and tell us about yourself. Who are you and where do you work? 

I’m Megan Dunn and I work for Innovation for Agriculture as part of the Soils Team. 

What is your expertise and what do you work on within RURALITIC? 

My work covers a range of topics across the agricultural industry; however, my main areas of interest are soils, carbon, local approaches to food production and systems resilience.  

For RURALITIC, I am facilitating Communities of Practice (COPs) looking into how farms can become more resilient to climate change. 

What is a research paper or book you wish everyone would read? 

Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary – a collection of essays by multiple authors, edited by Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria, and Alberto Acosta.  

The book consists of short insights into lots of different topics relating to the environment, the food system, political struggles and economics, and combines learnings from the past with some hope for the future. 

What is a question you currently try to answer? 

How can we support local horticulture supply chains to improve whole farm resilience? 

What is your favourite research method or the one most commonly used in your field?

Participatory research methods, centring people’s experience in research and sharing it through creative, interactive methods. 

What skill do you wish you had (scientific or otherwise)? 

I wish I had more practical skills such as hedge laying! 

If you were not a researcher, what would your profession be? 

An elderly carer.   

Where is your happy place? 

At the beach – my favourite is Blackhall Rocks! 

Who is a person who influenced your path? 

A person who influenced my path is Rob Lillywhite, Associate Professor, University of Warwick. His research focuses on understanding the environmental outcomes that arise from current practices and how burdens might be mitigated to reduce human impact on the environment.   

Ready to meet more RURALITIC researchers? Check out the previous ”friendship book” entries: Henrik Edgren and Lucie Chatelain.

Follow RURALITIC on BlueSky and LinkedIn to stay tuned for the next researcher in the spotlight.